Cameron: Fashion and our fatigue

DIANE CAMERON

Published 3:49 pm, Thursday, April 4, 2013

We sometimes think of fashion as frivolous and clothing as superficial, but historians tell us that our clothes mirror our culture. If that is true, then we need to start worrying because it appears from recent fashion shows that we're headed into battle.

Leading designers have presented their coming attractions for summer and fall and the theme is war. At the front lines of the fashion shows retailers were taking notes and they wrote this word over and over: Camouflage.

Just as the U.S. withdraws from the Middle East and as wars in other countries threaten to get bigger, we are inviting civilians to dress for battle.

According to Vogue, Harpers Bazaar and The New York Times, the style-conscious will be choosing camouflage as we strive for high visibility on the fashion front. Pants and skirts, tops and even party dresses were shown in shades of olive, gray and tan complete with ammunition belts. At the online shop CamoFormal, you can buy a cocktail, prom or even wedding dress in camo or with deceptively stylish woodsy details. Clearly, mud-colored clothing will not obscure one's ability to shine.

Now, don't think for a minute that these camo clothes are the same duds you can get for a few bucks at the Army surplus store. Though cheaper knock-offs are available, at the high-end boutiques a silk camo dress will be requisitioned for more than a thousand dollars.

"Camo is the leopard print of menswear," Nick Wooster of JC Penney told The New York Times. "It's a safe way for a guy to feel a little bit radical without actually being radical."

Fashion has always been a form of protective coloration and clothing a form of communication. For years, sociologists and historians have translated the rhetoric of dress to predict or explain social changes. They've linked hem lengths to the stock market, and waistlines to going to war, but the advance flourishes of fashion don't always sound clear signals and the messages of this new camouflage are nearly indecipherable.

Is all of this camo a comment on our seemingly continual war? Is it an indirect way to bond with our troops or express some of our guilt about their struggles — a kind of sartorial handshake with the men and woman of the military?

This new trend leaves nothing for those who want to express their outsider-ness, their distance from both the leader and the pack.

Wearing camouflage used to be the last refuge of sartorial disdain; it was shorthand for alienation and marginality. But now it's on the runway and what could be more conventional than to wear what is, literally, in Vogue?

Maybe this is a gotcha to those who try to stay outside the mainstream. Or, maybe wearing a fatigue jacket says just how tired we are of fashion.

Typically wearing a uniform makes a statement that one's role supersedes individuality. Military attire has always been intended to suppress individuality and to scare the enemy. In ancient battles, warriors disguised themselves as devils or skeletons, and the braid and trim on today's uniforms is a last vestige of those skeleton ribs painted on ancient fighting garb.

So does this year's fashionable camouflage look suggest that we want to be warrior and subversive at the same time? Or is it still about our fear that while we're a little bit radical, we are more than a little scared.

In the 1940s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt exhorted the country, saying: "This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."

By contrast, our generation, ignoring the real challenges of economy, energy and environment can dress like we have a dinner date with designers.